News

Commissioners not ready to OK $215M courthouse-jail expansion

Architectural drawing shows how a 5-story addition on the northside of the Grove Street Courthouse was dwarf the 1995 building. [COOPER HASKELL]

By Bill Moss, Published: September 20, 2023

Trying to digest a new total pricetag of $215 million for the proposed courthouse-jail expansion, Henderson County commissioners on Wednesday called a one-month pause to seek ideas on how to trim costs and evaluate whether financing is possible without a substantial tax increase.

Adding engineering and design costs and contingency set-asides to the $175 million construction cost of the proposed renovation and additions to both the Grove Street Courthouse and jail escalated the cost to the higher number. Four out of five commissioners expressed misgivings about moving forward with a project of that magnitude while Commissioner Michael Edney said the county can't afford to wait, given what he described as the verified need and construction industry inflation.

Chair Rebecca McCall appointed Edney and Commissioner Bill Lapsley to represent the board in an effort over the next month to look at ways the cost could be reduced, through phasing, value engineering or scope reduction. That would put the discussion and a potential vote back on the table at the board's next mid-month meeting, on Oct. 18.

Lapsley repeated the jaw-dropping total twice.

“I'm concerned about whether this county can afford a project of this scope,” he said. “That's not to diminish the needs that have clearly been pointed out to us. … If we were to do this project of $215 million and recognizing $150 million was our budget, are we looking at a 5-cent tax increase across the county, 10 cents, doubling our taxes? What are the taxpayers faced with to do this?”

County Manager John Mitchell responded that after commissioners signaled their wishes, “I would ask the budget staff to bring you options about what that would look like. You are correct that there's only one place that the money comes from, and it's taxpayers, and there's only one revenue line item effectively which would fund such a project and that is the property tax. Sales tax will be a part of it, for sure. But if there was a need to generate more revenue to accomplish this, it would have to come out of the property tax.”

While he praised the work of the construction estimators to present solid numbers, Commissioner Daniel Andreotta said “that is a big number.”

“I'm reminded of the one Sunday morning the pastor got up all excited before his congregation,” he said. “They were wanting a new building and he said, ‘I have great news. We have the money for our new building. The bad news it’s still in your pockets.’”

Andreotta also worried about the timing given the state of the economy.

“We also know that this is not the best time for construction cost and for the cost of borrowing, so we've got to figure out that and we've got to balance all that.” As an elected official, he said, “When the weight lands on your shoulders, 215 million bucks is heavy and I want you to know that I feel it. Those school students that were in here just a few minutes ago, one day they may help pay this back.”

McCall said that in her 25 years in industry her company has started every project looking at “value engineering,” or ways to streamline, trim or otherwise cut the overall cost of big capital projects. Then she pitched a couple of ideas for trims.

“How much renovation do we have to do to the existing courthouse?” she asked. “My understanding was that somebody relayed that the architect is looking at basically a gut job. There is a lot of usable space in that building. So I think we need to take a really hard look at how much of that usable space can stay as is and do the renovation where the renovation really has to be done, which would probably be in the existing courtroom spaces. I would I would challenge our construction-manager-at-risk and our design team to find at least $30 million they can take out of this project through those areas and possibly other areas.”

Edney, the strongest advocate for the total project, said the county's elected leaders had made the mistake of undersizing major county buildings.

“You don't build to a number,” he said. “You figure out what your real legitimate needs are and then figure out how to get there. I would say we made the mistake of building to a number in 1995. I think they built to a number in 2001 (for the jail) and I guarantee we built to a number at Hendersonville High School and we're gonna live to regret that 20 years from now.  So while I agree numbers are important and you've got to pay the bills,  it's very short sighted to build to a number.”

Given construction cost escalation of 8 percent over three years, “I would argue we can't afford to put it off, unless you got some way we’re gonna hit the lottery over that three years to make up 25 million bucks just because we waited.”

He pointed out that the architects had used a scientific approach to forecast the need.

“They spoke to all you guys (in the courthouse and jail) but then they looked at objective data on population trends, court case trends — all that stuff — and they came up with what objectively you can say are the needs now and predictably — as much as you can predict the future — are good numbers. So, yeah, this is a big project, but it's also the first project in our history that I would say we’ve done 100 percent right so far, because we've got the best information we can possibly get and as everybody else said, y'all did a hell of a job putting these numbers together. No matter what we do here, we're gonna stay on time and under budget because at $215 million it ain’t gonna go up, right?"

Mitchell said construction managers and the county's finance office would parse the numbers over the next four weeks.

“You've received this information. It's a lot,” he said. “We have a little time. We don't have a lot of time. Within the next month or so, you've got to make some kind of a decision about will you move forward with one part? Do you break it up? Do you do you do it all at one time?”

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